Day one of the third Test in India, and questions about David Gower’s fitness
immediately dominated. “Apologies for my voice,” the legendary batsman said
at the top of the broadcast. He offered no clarification, but the audible
and visible evidence (the blocked nose, the rheumy eyes, the sense from his
creaking throat that he had recently gargled a handful of crushed windscreen
glass), bore signs of an immune system in rebellion.

And no wonder. Observers of the game have long recorded the physically
punishing nature of a winter tour on the sub-continent — especially if a
dispute over broadcasting rights puts